Anatomy of a Joomla project

Joomla is a great platform to build websites. It is easy to work with and very flexible. But building a website on Joomla can require a great deal of planning and work. Some basics are mentioned below:

a) Effective design: Joomla has its custom theme that can be used. But to make your website work you need an effective design which enhances your products and services, is user friendly, meets your industry standards and is visually appealing. In short a design that works. For this you need a tam of expert web designers and Joomla coders who can translate any custom design into a Joomla theme.

b) Features: Depending upon the nature of the online business, some additional features will be needed to be added on a website which may not be a part of joomla's default set up. There are many plugins (free and paid) that can be used for adding features. It is also easy to custom create a plugin if it is not available.

c) Search Engine Optimization: Joomla  set up does not come search engine optimized. Some modules ned to be installed and search engine optimization needs to be done.

d) Online Marketing: Like any website, once your Joomla website is launched, it needs a marketing plan which will help theit to gt exposure and customers.

e) Server requirements: Server requirements vary depending upon the nature of the website. All joomla sites need mysql support and some need SSL.

Planning your online marketing campaign

When launching a new website it is important to plan an effective online marketing campaign. A well though out plan will ensure that your business is a success. Here are some ideas:

a) Think long term: While it is important to get customers immediately but the online marketing campaign should also involve long term planning as there are many marketing initiatives which need time to get implemented and reap results. Search Engine Optimization andLink Building are two such examples of initiatives that wll reap more results in the long term than Google Adwords.

b) Explore your niche: Each business is unique in some way which makes it stand apart from all compititors. If you explore your niche you can use that to market yourself and use it as your expertise. Customers like to know what makes you stand apart from the pack.

c) Know your customers: It is good to be thorough about your products and services but only that is not enough. You need to know your customers equally well. Unless you know your customers you will not be able to reach out to them and understand them.

d) Be your own competition: Look within your own business and try to improve it. Share your achievements with your customers or prospects, come up with more innovative ideas to advertise your growth, how you are different and better.

e) Don't keep all your eggs in one basket: Have an online marketing campaign which involves different straegies such as search engine optimization, social media optimization, link building, content syndication, blogging etc., so that you get traffic from different sources.

f) Use only white hat techniques: In search engine marketing applying strategies that are acceptable to searcch engines like google and genuinely serve the web users are called white hat techniques. There are black hat techniques also which should not be used as they would lead your website to get banned on search engines.

It is a good idea to start with a comprehensive marketing reseach which will help in getting answers to the above questions. Using an expert online marketing team or search engine marketing company would help in saving time and money.

Some must haves for e-commerce websites

When developing e-commerce websites there are some things if taken care of will ensure the success of your online business:

Search engine friendly structure: It is important the website to be search engine friendly to allow search engines to index all the pages correctly. The code has to be clean, the struture should not be too deep, the site should have the ability to add seo tags and all pages should be easily readible by search engine crawlers. It is possible to achieve this be planning the structure before the development starts or using search engine friendly platforms such as joomla + virtuemart, os commerce, open cart, zen cart etc.,

Search engine optimization: The main pages of the website should be search engine optimized so that they become relevant for the important keywords.

Online Marketing: It is important to plan an online marketing campaign before the development of the site starts. This is because the website without marketing will get lost in millions of websites on the internet.

Design that works: It is easy to get carried away with a design that looks like an artist's masterpiece. But it actually is not of much use if it is not user friendly, fast to load and trust building. A design should not only look good but also perform.

Newsletter: Newsletters are a great medium of informing your customers about new products, upcoming sales, industry trends, what's new with your company etc., They serve as a good marketing tool and make your site more interactive.

Search function: This is a great tool for customers which comes handy in many situations. If you want to make finding information easier for your customers then go for a basic and advanced search functions. Sort functions are very helpful as well.

Coupons: All customers like to receive discounts ,coupons are a good way of obliging them. Having a good discount system using which you can send discount coupons to regular customers is a good way of doing this.

Easy to find contact information: Many times customers have queries that they want addressed by talking directly to some one in the company. For this purpose it is a must to have phone no.s of the sales department or live chat support.

Security icons: Sharing credit card or personal financial information on the internet is very risky these days with internet frauds on the rise. It is therefore important to have proper security measures in place along with icons that indicate those to build trust and confidence amongst online shoppers.

Feedback form: It is good to have a form where your customers can let you know what they can think. Your customers will appreciate that you consider their feedback.

Easy to manage Admin section: Admin section which allows the staff to manage products, newsletters, offers, orders and analyze the buying trends with ease will ensure complete contol on the business. Softwares like Joomla, virtuemart, Os Commerce and open cart have well developed admin sections.